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Monday, 16 March 2015

Today we held our first lesson with our new 8th grade creative carousel group.

This class is made up of students chose to take ICT in the latter part of the school year.

When planning the units for this last carousel of the year, we made the decision to use an exploratory approach within a PBL model of learning.

This week's lessons focus on input devices through the use of MakeyMakeys. The students discussed input devices, watched a short movie about MakeyMakeys and experimented with connecting up the devices to cardboard guitars and potatoes. They then tested out their devices using a web version of guitar hero and a free download of Whack-a-Potato.

We found that once a few simple instructions were given, the kids were ready to roll. In fact they were extremely excited about using the devices and worked diligently in their groups, on each mini project.

We are working with both Doctopus and Google Classroom. The workbooks were distributed using Doctopus directly to each group, which were also generated through Doctupus. We will be using Classroom to keep the stream going, assign homework and personal tasks to the students as the units progress.

Friday, 13 March 2015

During the week ABC staff and students will focus some time on learning more about how the brain works, keeping the brain healthy and trying out various brain related activities.

The LRC is developing some special plans in support of Brain Awareness Week. These will take place in the interactive Brain Week Playground at the back of the LRC.

Here is a quick glimpse of those activities.

During Brain Awareness Week, students will learn more about the positive effects music can have on the brain. This will happen in the MakeyMakey section through interactions with a large step piano. Students will also get to try out their hand reflexes by playing Whack-a-Potato and Guitar hero. This will again feature MakeyMakey input devices, which will be connected to special LRC guitars and yes, you have it, real potatoes.

I will share a post on the MakeyMakey work later next week. So do check back if you would like to see how we set things up and how we made our large interactive Piano.

The Raspberry Pi computers will be powered up and ready to go with brain puzzles, games and brain teasers and there will be a multitude of other puzzles and code breaking activities available on site, for students to try out.

Watch our short Promo Video

Teachers can book slots for their students through the LRC appointment calendar and interested students can also book a bit of time, with LRC staff members, during break times.

Here is the link to pictures from last year's Brain Awareness Week. Do check back in a week and a half for updates from Brain Awareness Week 2015.